I was tagged by Ben at Dreaming Life to blog about how I became interested in lucid dreaming.

My interest in dreams and lucid dreaming is rather recent. My dream recall was never very good, even as a child, and as a result I only ever remembered a few striking dreams; most mornings I would wake up and not give much thought to what I had dreamt. I didn’t know the meaning of “lucid dream” then, but I had experienced that phenomenon at least a few times.

A few months ago I wrote about a spider I saw on my walk home. I wondered how that spider would have any lasting influence on my life. Well, Ben left a comment along those lines as well. I followed his URL–and discovered an entirely new world of dreams. After poking around through wikis and weblogs for a few days, I decided the 1/3 of each day spent sleeping deserved more attention than I was giving it.

I’m still working on developing dream recall, with slow but steady success. Although I have not been able to induce lucidity yet, I have a very high success rate with afternoon naps (1-2 hours). Back when I was an undergrad, there was a year where each day included an afternoon nap in the student union. The noise was constant enough that I could tune it out, and I managed to train my body clock to wake up on time. In that situation there were several times that my dreams became lucid–a great way to begin the next class.

Regardless of how quickly I make progress, I think it is important that I’ve starting paying more attention to dreams; it’s amazing how much dreams can alter reality.